Discussion of public health and health care policy, from a public health perspective. The U.S. spends more on medical services than any other country, but we get less for it. Major reasons include lack of universal access, unequal treatment, and underinvestment in public health and social welfare. We will critically examine the economics, politics and sociology of health and illness in the U.S. and the world.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Deep thoughts

The escape hatch for free market fundamentalism in the face of resource depletion and environmental degradation is the faith-based premise that technological developments will always come along to solve the problems. Too bad that cold fusion thing didn't pan out.

Quite a few people have noticed that the Mittbot seems to think he's still running in Republican primaries -- the Etch-a-Sketch never shook after all. The reason is obvious: the Christian religious fanatics, racist ultra-nationalists and ignoratti who constitute the Republican primary electorate couldn't be counted on to hold their noses and vote for him after all. He has to continually prove and re-prove his allegiance to them, and that is not a formula for winning in November. Hopefully that's true regardless of Sheldon Adelson's Chinese money.

How in tarnation can 15 guys carrying RPGs just walk onto a U.S.-run military base in Afghanistan and start blowing up $20 million jets? Don't they even have a perimeter? Meanwhile the Afghan police and military the U.S. is spending $4 billion a year to pay, support logistically, and train, seem equally as interested in killing Americans as in killing Taliban. Even after we supposedly "leave" in 2014 -- which actually means staying -- we're going to be spending that money to pay the Afghan forces because the Afghan government has absolutely no way of finding a fraction of that much dough. It might be helpful if someone would explain the reason for this.

The Republican position on Medicare is that we absolutely must cut Medicare spending drastically, but anybody who proposes to cut Medicare spending wants to put Granny on an ice floe.